The Federalist: Neil deGrasse Tyson and the Science of Smug Condescension

So what harm does it do if Tyson makes up stories to fit his rhetorical needs? As an elite celebrity scientist who gets plum appointments, attracts a cult of personality, and hobnobs with presidents, he sets the tone for the rank and file on issues that do involve scientific substance.

Take a recent blog post from climate scientist Kate Marvel, of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and more recently NASA, in which she proclaims, “I Am So Bored with the Hiatus.” The “hiatus” refers to the failure of global temperatures to warm significantly since the mid-1990s.

I’m not sure anything could better capture the adolescent, “be one of the cool kids” style of the Neil deGrasse Tyson era than to proclaim oneself “bored” and like-soooo-over-this about facts that don’t fit your favored scientific theory. The only way to top this would be to write it in emojis.

In fact, the “hiatus” is a really big problem for claims that mankind’s industrial production is causing the planet to heat up. Historical temperature records show a slight decline in global temperatures from roughly 1940 to 1970, which is why some scientists in the 70s were predicting a new ice age. By 1980, there was some wavering between predictions of global cooling and predictions of global warming, but warming won out and hit the height of its vogue in the late 1980s and the 1990s—not coincidentally, during a sustained period of slightly increasing temperatures. But global temperatures have now been flat for almost as long as they were rising.

The Climategate e-mails show that this has been a topic of great concern in private discussions among the warmists, with one of them asking his colleagues, “where the heck is global warming?… The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” They knew that they had hung their argument on rising surface temperatures, and they knew that they couldn’t explain the recent stasis in those temperatures.

But evidence that challenges the prevailing theory bores Kate Marvel, who brushes it off by declaring: “No serious scientist truly believes that the slowdown in surface warming invalidates greenhouse physics.”

This is utterly superficial. The basic physics of the greenhouse effect are not the issue here. At issue is a whole series of more complex questions: whether the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is mostly attributable to human beings, whether that increase produces a large enough greenhouse effect to warm the planet, and whether any effect from carbon dioxide (which is actually a very weak greenhouse gas) might be offset by the enormous number of other factors in an extremely complex system. So to cite basic physics—a common trope of the warmists—is a glib and irrelevant answer.

Marvel goes on to assert that the pause in warming can be explained by “a massive increase in ocean heat content.” Well, all right, I suppose this is a plausible theory. But it is also a very new one—and only one of 52 different theories offered to explain the hiatus.

Explanation:
The no true scotsman fallacy is a way of reinterpreting evidence in order to prevent the refutation of one’s position. Proposed counter-examples to a theory are dismissed as irrelevant solely because they are counter-examples, but purportedly because they are not what the theory is about.
Example:
The No True Scotsman fallacy involves discounting evidence that would refute a proposition, concluding that it hasn’t been falsified when in fact it has.
Source: http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/no-true-scotsman/

From the LLNL website:
=======================
LLNL scientists find precipitation, global warming linkhttps://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2013/Nov/NR-13-11-04.html
“Both these changes are occurring simultaneously in global precipitation and this behavior cannot be explained by natural variability alone,” said LLNL’s lead author Kate Marvel. “External influences such as the increase in greenhouse gases are responsible for the changes.”
The team compared climate model predications with the Global Precipitation Climatology Project’s global observations, which span from 1979-2012, and found that natural variability (such as El Niños and La Niñas) does not account for the changes in global precipitation patterns. While natural fluctuations in climate can lead to either intensification or poleward shifts in precipitation, it is very rare for the two effects to occur together naturally.
======================
It’s models all the way down for Dr Marvel. Thus, dismissal of natural variability is an AGW-believer’s imperative. A strong natural variability explanation implies (1) man is not in control of Earth’s climate, and (2) it is implies a likely mathematical chaotic behavior (i.e. unpredictable).

So of course she will resort to a Logical Fallacy if needed to defend her work and reputation. She needs a permanent academic posting somewhere. So she puts herself out as a Church of AGW Climate Change true-believer. As a post-doc at LLNL, she needs a permanent academic posting somewhere, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her end up on John Holdren’s anti-science team at the Obama White House.

I believe it is a “Strawman” or an “Aunt Sally”. This rhetorical tactic ascribes a completely different position to an opponent and then discredits it. In this case it is alleged that we deny greenhouse physics which would be an absurd position. Ironically, she actually believes we deny greenhouse physics, so she’s the fool in this drama.

Exactly. Anthony put it thus: “The basic physics of the greenhouse effect are not the issue here. At issue is a whole series of more complex questions: whether the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is mostly attributable to human beings, whether that increase produces a large enough greenhouse effect to warm the planet, and whether any effect from carbon dioxide (which is actually a very weak greenhouse gas) might be offset by the enormous number of other factors in an extremely complex system.”

I would like to see a simple statement along these lines as a permanent part of the blog banner. The sceptics’ position is continually misrepresented, and many top scientists in other disciplines are taken in by the deceipt (the brilliant Nobel prize-winning astrophysicist Brian Schmidt is unfortunately one example of many).

I suggest something like: “CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It does warm the planet. The science is well-established. But the amount of warming is minor, and is likely to be beneficial. The IPCC falsely claims that “positive feedbacks” will multiply CO2’s effect, and falsely claims that it will be catastrophic.“.

“I suggest something like: “CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It does warm the planet. “”

Already a foregone conclusion. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. That means it absorbs and emits IR photons, competing with water vapor. In the lower, dense atmosphere it is more likely to capture IR than to emit it; in the thin stratosphere above a certain height it is more likely to emit IR photons to space. Whether or not this “warms the planet” depends on your imagined alternate reality. Relative to a planet without atmosphere? With oceans but no atmosphere? With an atmosphere with or without H2O but without CO2? And what albedo does that alternative Earth have?
Nothing is easy.

This PR firm tutored deceit has gone on so long that it now amount to libelous slander of one group by another group, and is becoming well known in the whole conservative blogosphere as being slanderous. These “scientists” are no different from various Enron insider experts. They are manipulative criminal sociopaths.

Right now thousands of computer gamers are in full on rebellion and boycott mode, organized mostly on Twitter under the #gamergate and #notyourshield hashtags, putting in long hours in letter writing campaigns to advertisers on gaming journalism/review sites. Insider corruption was discovered and just as the JournaList secret mailing list was revealed now a gaming media version of the same thing has been exposed, with journalists conspiring together to whitewash a major insider influence scandal and political agenda of SJWs (“social justice warriors”), a bunch of female and male feminist activists taking over journalism. The parallels to Climategate and its aftermath are very close.

If only skeptics had such energy! At least the #AskDrMann hashtag became 95% skeptical.

CO2 is what is known as a radiative gas meaning that it absorbs IR at a certain point in the spectrum. It is present in the atmosphere at 395 ppm. What this means in specific terms for the general global temperature has not been determined, nor can it ever be. Anyone who calculates a figure for climate sensitivity does so entirely through theoretical considerations and certain assumptions all according to his own lights. That is why we get climate sensitivity figures ranging from 1K to over 8K and even higher when whackkos turn their hand to it. The bottom line is that we know that CO2 is a radiative gas and anything else that one hears about this, such as the common assumption that CO2 causes warming, is simply a bald assertion. The empirical data is the temperature record since 1940 which shows no warming for the past 70 years that is attributable to ATM CO2.

If somehow some atmospheric heat went underwater, it’s out of the loop for the foreseeable future++; it raises ocean temps a few thousandths as much as it cools the air, and will henceforth only have effect in slightly slowing any future water warming. It cannot warm the warmer air, if any.

The propagandists for agw seem very loathe to be proven wrong. Sure nobody likes to be wrong but we all are from time to time.
These people have, in some instances, based their careers and life’s work on the unproven CO2/greenhouse theory.
While their reluctance to waiver is understandable, their egos should not cost society as is proposed.
Like we have the ability to ‘adjust’ planetary climate at will….arrogant buffoons.

The increase in CO2 may be attributable to warming oceans. Warming oceans may release CO2, and cooling oceans may suck up CO2. This may explain the fact up-ticks in CO2 levels do not precede, but rather follow, up-ticks in temperature.

As the earth recovers from the Little Ice Age, it is only logical to conclude the oceans would warm and therefore release CO2. The question then becomes, when we see current levels of CO2 are going up, how much is attributable to the recovery from the Little Ice Age, and how much is attributable to humans.

I think most people would agree that human emissions are the reason for the increase in [harmless, beneficial] CO2. But that is really misdirection. The relevant question is: how much global warming has that caused?

I have asked repeatedly for someone to post scientific evidence, showing the fraction of the 0.7ºC rise in global temperature that is attributed to human activity. But AFAIK, no one has ever provided an answer to that question. And that question goes to the heart of the entire ‘global warming’ debate.

If human-emitted CO2 is causing global warming, then someone should be able to provide testable measurements showing how much warming is due to our emissions. But no one really knows how much, or even if, any global warming is being caused by human CO2 emissions.

The follow-up question would be: Is that added global warming a good or a bad thing, on net balance?

I see that you continue the unbroken record: still no one has ever answered my questions. You have merely turned my question around and asked it back. As a debate tactic, that is one big fail.

You are once again trying to make skeptics prove, or disprove, something that skeptics are skeptical about. Can’t you understand that you are simply avoiding the issue? And that you are demanding that skeptics prove a negative?

The fact is that there are no empirical measurements quantifying the amount of global warming supposedly caused by human CO2 emissions. Out of the 0.7ºC rise in global T over the past 150 years or so, please post verifiable evidence measuring how much of that warming is due to human emissions.

But if you cannot post real world measurements showing the specific amount of human-caused global warming, then you are asking us to accept your baseless conjecture. Aren’t you? You want skeptics to admit that humans cause global warming — but you cannot produce any evidence to support your own belief.

You assert that human emissions cause global warming. With so much money at stake, it is reasonable for skeptics to say: prove it. Or at least, post convincing evidence showing the amount of warming that you claim is caused by our CO2 emissions. Saying, “Half”, or “Most” is not sufficient. We need real world, testable, falsifiable measurements.

But after more than thirty years of diligent searching, by thousands of scientists, no one has found any such evidence. There are no such measurements anywhere. So, a question: at what point will you admit that your complete lack of evidence goes a long way toward falsifying your belief in AGW?

Or, will you never admit that you could be wrong? That’s what it’s beginning to look like.

Seems that ARGO supports a 0.02 deg rise in ocean temps. Water holds a thousand times more heat than air. So, this is equivalent to 1000 x 0.02 = 20 deg C of warming of the air. Once this is unleashed, we will hit the tipping point with runaway carbon pollution leading to thousands of climate refugees, all of which will have a devastating impact on indigenous people and destroy tourism in Pakistan.

“Of course, the persons making those “come back to haunt us” statements fail to disclose that the ocean heat content records for the tropical Pacific indicate a major portion of the warming that has occurred during the recent global warming period is a lagged response to an earlier warming.”

“That, plus some studies indicate that the warming of the oceans might be exaggerated, and that the deep oceans, where most of the heat is stored, are cooling. Then there’s the fact that, as Georgia Tech Professor Judith Curry points out, “even if the heat from surface heating of the ocean did make it into the deep ocean…it is very difficult to imagine how this heat could reappear at the surface in light of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.” The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that heat will always tend to disperse from a more concentrated form to a less concentrated form, which implies that heat diffused throughout the vast mass of the world’s oceans is not going to magically re-concentrate itself at the surface.” ~Robert Tracinski

Unleashed? Do you think its all suddenly going to jump out on us? Have you want understanding of thermodynamics? A body of water can’t raise the surrounding air by 1degree let alone 20 when the airs already warmer than the water.

If the oceans did infact increase in temperature 0.02 degree, which admittedly is a tremendous amount of heat, yet impossible to measure, the oceans in turn would only be able to release enough heat into the air to increase it’s temperature to a new air/ocean temperature equilibrium temperature of just slightly less than 0.02 degree; which is totally insignificant. To increase the air temperature beyond the 0.02 degree, would would have to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which would be a universe ending event.

As Judith Curry emphasized, the laws of physics and entropy in particular, in which energy is properly expressed as Gibbs free energy, with both a heat *and* an entropy term, well, Humpty Dumpty can’t be put together again, as concentrated heat from Global Warming, diffuses into the vast oceans but there is then no reverse-entropy mechanism to ever get it out again in concentrated form, so really, 0.02 degrees is all you get back out for surface temperature, assuming the heat flow reverses. And *that’s* the basic physics alarmists deny.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is a wonk “scientist”. It is nice that he promotes scientific interest in popular culture, but it would be even better if he used facts, rather than popular consensus.
His recent work in the “Cosmos” TV series shows him to be more anti-church than pro-science. Falling back on the current radical atheist narrative rather than using actual facts is his standard MO.

I enjoyed the first few episodes of Cosmos, but it rapidly descended into absurdity.

I was hoping to use it to help educate my 9 year old, but even she saw through most of the problems with it. He’s a personable and likeable fellow, but if you want to see what he’s actually like check YouTube for some unedited talks of his. He’s basically incapable of completing more than one sentence at a time, so I have to assume the production of Cosmos was very expensive.

Tyson is the most over-hyped scientist of the 21st century. His popularity is solely due to delusional millennials who watch Jon “Stewart” Leibowitz. His Cosmos series promoted drug use among other nonsense.

I commented on a FB post where he argued why NASCAR can’t possibly drive around a corner as fast as they DO drive around corners due to limits of friction / grip of the tires being greater than 1. I explained to him that he does not understand how tires work, and that’s why he applied the science incorrectly. When observations trump your understanding, it is your understanding that is wrong – not reality. I explained how tires can pull more than 1 G of lateral grip because the rubber interlocks with the surface in shear forces. He never commented and deleted the post!!!

He argued back and forth with people until I clarified that he was confused.

The only car that could get over 1 g acceleration I heard of was someone who did construct a jet motor on his pickup and fired that engine. His maximum speed was some 700 km/h (~400 mph) before he landed back on a hillside. Unfortunately the tires didn’t grip at full air speed, so he didn’t survive the reencounter with the earth… Made it to the Darwin Awards.

Ferdinand Engelbeen
September 19, 2014 at 2:16 pm
“The only car that could get over 1 g acceleration I heard of was someone who did construct a jet motor on his pickup and fired that engine.”

When Porsche noticed way back in time that their cars accelerated faster than 1 G they examined why this is even possible and found that the tires develop a certain stickiness. Otherwise you would be right.

Goodyear implants all their NASCAR Race day tires with RFID chips. The teams “lease” the tires for race day and then return them. Prevents one better financed team from buying excess tires for testing and practice, i.e. an unfair advantage. Tires are absolutely critical in that sport with the minimal banking of most NASCAR tracks. Goodyear engineers works every year with a subset of drivers to continually refine the rubber-synthetic blend for each track for the best “grip.” That ensures the spectators see fast, exciting races, no matter what track they are at.

Shortly before the tern “blog” was coined, I stumbled upon a web site authored by one of the original Apple founders. Several self-proclaimed physicists were discussing the physics of a thrown curve ball, complete with illustrations of the direction of spin.

After having a good laugh, I introduced myself and suggested that they visit their local high schools where any young baseball player might give them a lesson in applied physics. And show them the correct direction to spin a curve ball. Academic credentials rarely trump properly guided experiential learning.

Indeed. It gets worse in cricket, where under certain conditions the same ball thrown with the same spin will swerve in opposite directions, and indeed even during one trajectory.. the complex interactions of smooth (deliberately polished during the match) and rough surfaces, the seam and various aerodynamic effects like boundary layer separation are assumed to be the reason, but no one actually knows.

six part series on the science of cricket. Its a LOT more than you think.

As for spin, and cricket, it is the exception to hit the ball on a full toss, so any curving of the ball in the air, is somewhat irrelevant.

The key is that the ball will normally hit the ground, before the batter hits it, and it is a whole world of difference, as to what a spinning ball will do, when it hits the ground.

Baseball batters, might think the cricket batter, has an unfair advantage, using a bat with a flattish surface, but the bowler gets back in the game, because of what he can make the ball AFTER it hits the ground.

My brother could bowl a cricket ball, so that it never ever left the ground, after hitting, so it was quite unhittable, and would roll right under the bat. And as for darting sideways, after hitting the ground, that can sometimes appear unbelievable.

As for cars and Gees, those cars tend to have so much aerodynamic down thrust, that you can get past one gee, without necessarily sticky tires, because the down force is greater than the car weight.

A top fuel dragster accelerates from a standstill to 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) in as little as 0.8 seconds (less than one third the time required by a production Porsche 911 Turbo to reach 60 miles per hour (97 km/h)) and can exceed 280 miles per hour (450 km/h) in just 660 feet (200 m). This acceleration subjects the driver to an average force of about 4.0 G over the duration of the race.

No, the ocean warming is massive, something like 4.3×10^293,347 of joules (just making that up). This, after considerable hemming and hawing, amounts to 0.02 deg C in ten years measured by a floating, moving buoy network whose data is “model corrected” and has one float for every 45,000 square miles of ocean.

But I’m sure that ARGO measurement error is far less than .02 deg. If you agree with me, raise your hand.

If you agree that the 0.02 deg is statistically significant and represents “massive ocean heat” raise your hand.

Mary Brown…. (said with a smile): I think you are full of beans (assuming, NOW, you are being sarcastic above — maybe a little less dry next time?… sorry to have taken you seriously and responded accordingly…)
Janice

Argo have been operating for a decade. We have no idea of temperatures prior to that or in other periods of warming

Argo measures a fraction of the earths ocean which have an average depth of 4000 metres and an average temperature of four degrees centigrade.the heat you suggest can not come out as twenty degrees of atmospheric warming. What would be the mechanism for it to be released suddenly to cause that?

Anyway, I heard Thomas stocker himself say that we did not have the technology to measure the temperatures of the deep ocean.

In other words ‘we don’t know’

It’s a useful phrase that climate scientists would do well to learn in an assortment of languages.

When you are TOO subtle, your words create too much ambiguity to go unaddressed.

By being overly-clever you, thus, often make it necessary for others such as Mario and Tony and I to issue corrections to prevent you from misleading those ignorant of the science you could easily APPEAR to many to be twisting.

Caveat: There are, wonderfully, MANY English-not-first-language readers of WUWT; please remember that they are highly unlikely to pick up on subtle sarcasm.

Thus, we will continue to “refute” you, dear Ms. Brown, when you assert bad science (apparently in all seriousness).

Sorry for the lack of sarc tag. Mr. Brown always complains that no one knows when I’m kidding. I’m just practicing for my new career writing for the Huff Post and the like. It would all be believed there and passed along without scrutiny.

As for the tourism in Pakistan, that’s my favorite global warming story of all time….

Keep in mind, it was written when Osama bin Laden was living there and drones were delivering packages daily that weren’t from Amazon.

Then again, I read yesterday that the ice would all be gone in the arctic by 2015 and that would cost us $60 trillion dollars. I’ve learned that when you make this stuff up, you have to think really big

I feed real empathy for the warmists as they promote the need for sustainability a la’ Maurice Strong (Club of Rome.” But grasping at mouldy straws will not feed the world. We need to get on with developing plant hybrids and farmlands that can survive a new Little Ice Age, not waste resources on high-entropy “renewables.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson is a wonk “scientist”. It is nice that he promotes scientific interest in popular culture, but it would be even better if he used facts, rather than popular consensus.
His recent work in the “Cosmos” TV series shows him to be more anti-church than pro-science. Falling back on the current radical atheist narrative rather than using actual facts is his standard MO.

Wonk? Good descriptor though – perfect and as regards TV series [reconstituted crap] “Cosmos” – call Carl Sagan what you like but at least he treated and thus related to his audience as though they were mature [even half intelligent] adults.

Before Carl Sagan showed how to accumulate wealth and fame on the coattails of the Big Picture, nearly all “serious scientists” dismissed science popularizers as inferior in professional ability and integrity.

Despite his politics, Sagan never came off as political in the original series, least not that I could tell. Politics has no place in science.

The “new” but dismal & boring series was full of (sh) it, thanks to Tyson, Sagan’s widow and that McFarland sop. They even had some meaningless/confusing “news-conference” just before the series started to make sure everyone knew Fox Channel was hosting the series & not Fox News.

Now, now, no sideswipes at Neil deGrasse Tyson. He may never have contributed anything original to science and never will, but he’s pigmentally challenged and therefore above criticism. As for Marvel, she’s not exactly a heavyweight either.

Kate has jumped the MannSharkPig and has publicly stepped on her diction. It is no surprise she could be so over something that will come between her and her livelihood. It represents nothing less than hiatus denial.

AS IF the earth’s climate is constrained by the same parameters as the conditions under which such physics are ascertained.

LOL, the Emperor has no clothes, but there “… really, really, IS A GIANT GREENHOUSE SURROUNDING THE EARTH. It’s just like Wonder Woman’s invisible plane.” {quote from Any Run-of-the-Mill Fantasy Science Club Member}

And cultist scientists continue to parade their ignorance for everyone to see with only a select few calling them out on it. Whenever they are inconvenienced by facts they don’t know what to do and let their oversimplified understanding of a very complex issue shine through.

The “greenhouse physics” she’s talking about is an inductive inference applied to the terrestrial climate. It’s this: the IR radiant energy absorbed by CO2 is efficiently converted into kinetic energy in the troposphere, therefore the sensible heat of the troposphere must necessarily rise.

The first clause is true. The second clause is without any foundation. It is a scientific non-sequitur that can be bridged only by a falsifiable theory of climate. That theory does not exist.

In its absence, it’s not known whether other climate response channels, such as increases in convection, in tropical rain, or in cloudiness, will remove most or all of that kinetic energy. There may be no detectible change in sensible heat at all. And so far, no detectably non-natural change is what we’ve got.

One would think that climate scientists — and physical scientists in general — would understand this immediately. But somehow this elementary of scientific thinking has escaped a large fraction of scientists and most of those who readily give themselves over to outspokenness.

In my view, climate activism and the politics of guilt have combined to produce an epidemic of incompetence.

I believe Pat Frank makes it clear that an overall theory does not exist. Hence, it cannot be found false. I have yet to hear an alarmist, even amongst those most hailed as experts, make a single, simple statement that can be found false. The qualifiers “could” and “may” and “possible” abound and you even wonder what the definition of “is” is to these people

You are correct in detail. They are extremely careful not to officially claim anything that could possibly be verified or falsified. They strongly imply though that increased CO2 causes increased radiation and warming.

A true scientist is willing to make a verifiable or falsifiable prediction based on a theory.

I spent over forty years in the aircraft maintenance business. Many times I was appalled by the lack of understanding of the basics of aircraft flight control and electronics by people who should have known better. In some of the cases it was by pilots. Once by an aerodynamic engineer. While in the USAF we taught students the purpose of the rudder trim was to correct for crosswinds. That was flat wrong. It is to correct for drag imbalances of the wings usually caused by fuel weight imbalance. Crosswinds in flight are simply corrected for by changing your heading. I find it interesting that the similar lack of understandings of physics by people who should know better does also occur in climate science.

I’m just guessing that this kind of thing ( misunderstand of the basics) goes on everywhere.

I’m often struck by the “meta” nature of people taking pictures of people taking pictures of themselves. This particular Larry, Curly and Moe tableau shares the added highlight of being of three subjects who each share a reputation for “brilliance” which is well beyond anything they have demonstrated in real life. Reputes of intelligence which in each case rest almost entirely on endlessly repeated but totally unsupported assertions of the same. Despite the obviously illusory nature of their reputations each seems to be internally convinced that those reputations are completely justified and are willing to make whatever sacrifices of honesty and dignity are necessary to reinforce to the world that they are smart and we are not.

“I have to admit that I missed out on the ascendancy of Neil deGrasse Tyson. In my era, the nation’s beloved “scientific communicator” was Carl Sagan.

“And he had many of the same flaws. As I’ve written about elsewhere, Sagan spoke eloquently about need to follow the evidence wherever it goes, without regard for your own preconceptions or ideological preferences. Then he bowed to his own preconceptions, declaring that industrial civilization must be destroying the earth, it’s just that we don’t know whether it’s going to bake the globe or freeze it. (This was back when the doomsayers were making their transition from global cooling to global warming.)”

Thanks for that. (:

Progressive scientists, to be clear, are capable of expressing scientific standards very eloquently and compellingly, and they are capable of applying them in narrowly defined and carefully selected circumstances – usually not to themselves.

The ideal of truly beginning from a Socratic position of assuming that we know so very little, and following evidence, and checking for disproof at each step, and having several alternative explanations, or admitting the data is not sufficient, is merely an appearance the Progressive scientists display for vanity’s sake. It works well to say such things to the public, which prefers to trust experts. But progressive scientists will only perform one function and that is to affirm their own ideologies.

Bear in mind that when this was broadcast the risk of nuclear war was quite real. Kennedy very nearly stumbled into one during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nobody then was as concerned about climate change as their were about a fully possible overnight destruction of civilization. If Iran gets much closer to having nuclear weapons we may all have another opportunity to worry less about ‘climate change’ and worry more about being vaporized before the morning alarm goes off.

Maybe not KNOWN, but certainly suspected. Everything we theorized about the formation of stars lead to the belief that planet forming may be a fairly common accurance. And with the evidence we have now it seems like it may happen even more often then we once thought.

I have always thought of Sagan as the original alarmist who got all the proto-alarmists in a tizzy with his doomsday vision of a “nuclear winter”. He rode high on that steed for about a year until it finally passed. But fashions change and it is now so uncool to shrill about cold climate. Go see his wikipedia entry…there is nothing about any “nuclear winter” in his CV.

I heard Sagan give a popular lecture in person back in 1977. He had the skills to interest an audience with his words and imagery. Running the Mars exploration program at Cornell was a fine platform and going on the Tonight Show made him popular. It was a different time.

I saw Sagan at about the same time in San Diego. It was a seminar in a conference hall in the valley. He was the draw. I can’t think of anything anyone said that wasn’t either banal or incomprehensible. But Sagan was a hoot. A powerful storm knocked out the power. But Sagan had the doors opened and addressed the crowd with one of those loud-hailers that hung around your neck and you spoke into with a curly-cord microphone.
Other than a couple of kamikaze kayakers seen outside on the flooded San Diego River, Sagan stole the show.
But, what did he say…?

I enjoyed the “cosmic” parts of Sagan’s “Cosmos” series, but rolled my eyes whenever he waxed poetic about the dangers humanity posed to our planet. Later, when he morphed into Carl GlobalWarmingPollutionNuclearWinter Sagan, I just stopped listening.

Tyson is the man that says there are no longer 9 planets because the ninth is just a dwarf planet. Hello? Calling all dwarves. Are you no longer humans because you’re dwarf humans? This is clearly abuse of the word “dwarf” puzzlingly used to muddy rather than clarify the situation. It also clearly demonstrates a bias toward giantism over dwarfism since no one thinks of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune as anything but planets for being giant planets.

I resemble that remark. But only resemble it. My mother was 4’9″. That qualified her to join the Little Peoples of America organization. I grew to just under 4’11”. Too tall for an organization of people who know how to party.

When Pluto, Charon and the other satellites are finally imaged in details, who cares whether its a dwarf planet or not? Ceres (which has been elevated from largest asteroid to dwarf planet) is about to be imaged by the DAWN spacecraft and I’m looking forward to that as well.

Bearing animus towards NDT because of classification of planets is preposterous.

Marvel goes on to assert that the pause in warming can be explained by “a massive increase in ocean heat content.”
============

Nice hyopothesis. Now do the actual science and show us this “massive increase in ocean heat content” otherwise it’s no different than:
the pause in warming can be explained by “a invisible pink unicorns farting in my back garden”

Kate Marvel’s blog site doesn’t take comments, and the ocean heat content graph she offers has no physical confidence intervals. As a self-acknowledged true climate scientist, Dr. Marvel is certainly true to consensus climate science standards.

Of course, when AGW is axiomatic, confidence intervals are unnecessary because conclusions always follow only by logical deduction from the accepted basal truth.

Seen in this light, consensus climate science is not a science at all. It’s a philosophy. So, Dr. Marvel’s self-categorization is objectively incorrect, as evidenced by her own words and data. She’s a climate philosopher, and her field is AGW-studies.

– The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
– The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability, or many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
– There are claims of great accuracy.
– Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested.
– Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses.
– The ratio of supporters to critics rises and then falls gradually to oblivion.

Niel D Tyson could never even question the assertion that global warming is happening and will be catastrophic for humans because his whole livelihood, his income, his connections to Hollywood, would all dry up. So rather than promote science and the scientific method, and simply say I believe humans are impacting the climate negatively but I am still evaluating new data that comes in, he takes the anti-science stand of insulting anyone who questions the AGW theory even though the W in the AGW theory has not been there for a significant amount of time now. He makes me ashamed I ever studied science, because climate science has become the most openly and overtly exclusionary pocket of society we have now. Racism and homophobic people have been ostracized from our society, and rightly so, but the intolerance of the global warming science cult is not only approved by our media culture but it is encouraged. Its is accepted prejudicial behavior, rejecting people because they want to apply the scientific method to a science subject.

It will be interesting to see and hear the smug warmists try to explain away significant global cooling, the end of global warming. (P.S. Maunder like solar magnetic minimums last from 100 to 150 years. )

The warmists are trying to dumb down the conversation, to avoid discussing the observations and analysis results that supports almost no AGW warming, as opposed to dangerous AGW warming. The warmists cannot scientifically explain why there is a ‘hiatus’ in warming, there is no hope that they can defend their predicted dangerous warming. The planet resists rather than amplifies forcing changes. The warming due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would be less than 1C therefore, if there was not a mechanism that inhibits AGW in the upper troposphere which explains why the predicted tropical region warming and 8km tropical troposphere hot spot is not observed.

There are more than 10 fundamental observations and analysis (Humlum et al’s phase analysis of the CO2 changes vs temperature changes, lack of tropical region warming, no tropical troposphere hot spot, and so on) results that support the assertion that more than 90% of the warming in the last 50 years was due to solar magnetic cycle changes, rather the increase an atmospheric CO2.

… We find a high degree of co-variation between all data series except 7) and 8), but with changes in CO2 always lagging changes in temperature. The maximum positive correlation between CO2 and temperature is found for CO2 lagging 11-12 months in relation to global sea surface temperature, 9.5-10 months to global surface air temperature, and about 9 months to global lower troposphere temperature. The correlation between changes in ocean temperatures and atmospheric CO2 is high, but do not explain all observed changes. …

…Summing up, our analysis suggests that changes in atmospheric CO2 appear to occur largely independently of changes in anthropogene emissions. A similar conclusion was reached by Bacastow (1976), suggesting a coupling between atmospheric CO2 and the Southern Oscillation. However, by this we have not demonstrated that CO2 released by burning fossil fuels is without influence on the amount of atmospheric CO2, but merely that the effect is small compared to the effect of other processes. Our previous analyzes suggest that such other more important effects are related to temperature, and with ocean surface temperature near or south of the Equator pointing itself out as being of special importance for changes in the global amount of atmospheric CO2.

“I’m so sick in my spare time humouring thugs”, makes as much sense as Kate Marvel.
Except when referring to the Alarmed Ones, there is too much truth to the description.
They act like,lie like and attempt to intimidate like. Good chance they are, thugs.
Funny how the rules of society apply only to the rest of us, due process, impartial evidence based policy processes, honesty and ethics.. all good except when required of the Team IPCC ™ and their collaborators.

Historical temperature records show a slight decline in global temperatures from roughly 1940 to 1970, which is why some scientists in the 70s were predicting a new ice age.

No, there was a ‘new ice age’ concern because records showed a strong decrease from 1940 to 1970. Those temperatures were then adjusted by the Winston Smiths of Climastrology who live off of the tax dollars taken by force from hard working citizens.

Has anyone mentioned to the brilliant young NASA scientist, that the first law of thermodynamics (you know – basic physics), says that heat rises? (versus trapping heat in the deep oceans). Or is it global warming that makes these basic laws of physics just all upside down?…..

Scott while you are correct, that is not how heat gets to be submersed into oceans. There are circulations. Now, I agree that CO2 cannot and does not cause heat to go down into the oceans for a number of reasons. However, one example is the ENSO process, in which the Easterly trade winds blow the upwelling cool waters from the western pacific to the west. The cooler water reduces cloud cover. The sun warms the surface waters… and it piles up significantly higher on the western pacific where it plunges down deep. During El Nino, the water rises to the surface and travels eastward releasing the stored heat. This is known… and does not contradict the basics of physics.

Anyway – other than that, I am a climate skeptic and do not subscribe to “CO2 done it”…

So Just what “Greenhouse Physics” is it that Kate Marvel believes is validated by surface warming or the slowdown in same.

Now solar energy attenuation by clouds, would cause a slowdown in surface warming, but that doesn’t have anything at all to do with “Greenhouse physics.”

As I understand “Greenhouse physics,” it has to do with the capture of surface emitted LWIR EM radiant energy, by so-called greenhouse molecules. Now I don’t doubt for a moment, that such capture occurs, and I don’t know personally, anyone who does doubt that effect is real.

But it seems to me, that “surface warming” happens BEFORE, the emission of that enhanced LWIR radiant energy; not AFTER.

And the capture of a surface emitted LWIR photon, is something that is performed by a single GHG molecule, not by any conspiracy of a group of GHG or any other molecules, so it is a phenomenon entirely internal to that molecule, and not a part of the collective atmospheric molecules, that exhibit the macro scale property of Temperature, and heating / cooling.

That single GHG molecule, that captures such a photon, and manifests that, in some internal excited state, must eventually disgorge that photon, and return to the ground state, and that would leave that molecule, as simply another member of a very large assemblage of molecules that collectively represent the Temperature of a gas.

So how does this GHG molecule divvy up the absorbed photon energy, into smaller pieces to somehow spread around, and why don’t those photon energies show up in the extra-terrestrial emission spectrum of the earth. The GHG capture seems to me to be just a transient event. But ! the re-emission of essentially the same energy photon, allowing for line broadening phenomena, results in an isotropic distribution of such re-emitted photons, and only about half of those, are headed back towards the surface.

So I don’t see much of a “heating” of either the atmosphere by such capture, or of the surface, by the return of something less than half of them to the surface.

The upward escape path, is favored over the downward return path, by line broadening effects, which reduce the probability of capture by an increasingly cold, and sparse GHG population at higher altitudes.

Now because of the capture of LWIR photons by GHG molecules, and then the isotropic redistribution of those photons, it is to be expected that the external spectrum should be deficient, in just those capture bands, and that indeed is the case.

What is missing from the extra-terrestrial spectrum, is just those captured and re-emitted photons, that returned towards earth, instead of escaping to space.

So no, I don’t doubt the GHG capture physics; I just can’t make it “heat” (verb) the earth surface.

Maybe OT, maybe not, but it seems that in the last few decades as soon as Man notices something and then figures out a way to measure it, then it becomes something that needs to be regulated. Stuff in the water. Stuff in the air. It may have been there for millennia. But given the proper theory (with a strong dose of politics) then “it” becomes something we must deal with NOW!

(Of course, there has been “stuff” that needed to be dealt with, but that’s the science with a strong dose of patience to allow the science to actually “settle’ comes in.)

“(Of course, there has been “stuff” that needed to be dealt with, but that’s the science with a strong dose of patience to allow the science to actually “settle’ comes in.)”
Should be:
(Of course, there has been “stuff” that needed to be dealt with, but that’s where the science with a strong dose of patience to allow the science to actually “settle’ comes in.)

“Some claim that evolution is just a theory, as if it were merely an opinion. The theory of evolution, like the theory of gravity, is a scientific fact.”

(Neil deGrasse Tyson then proceeded to dive his space ship into one of the hundreds of *hypothetical* lakes on Titan, while speaking of them as though there is no debate at all over their existence.)

Then, just a few minutes later …

Cosmos, Episode 2, 40:10:

“Science works on the frontier between knowledge and ignorance. We’re not afraid to admit what we don’t know. There’s no shame in that. The only shame is to pretend that we have all of the answers.”

An alternative perspective …

“When NASA scientists looked at radar images showing channels appearing to ‘feed’ into flat bottomed depressions, they thought they were seeing methane lakes fed by episodic methane rivers. But for obvious reasons NASA scientists have not noticed the similarity between radar images of Venus’ surface and those of Titan’s surface. They have no reason to associate these two bodies so remote from each other. In the radar image of Venus above, we see both flat-bottomed depressions and river-like channels, presenting a parallel to Titan’s ‘lakes’ too obvious to miss. In fact our prediction of ‘flat-bottomed valleys bordered by steep cliffs with scalloped edges’ turns out to be a perfect description of what we actually observe in the radar images of Titan. So we are not deterred by the confidence of NASA scientists: When Cassini takes a closer look at the north polar region in question, they will not find what they are looking for, except by straining credulity further.”

Actually, I’d argue that’s exactly what is happening. That’s what happens during a negative PDO. What we are seeing is a roughly constant forcing with warm periods being warmer and cool periods being flat.

Therefore expect warming at ~half the rate of 1975 – 1998. It is warming but much slower than “expected”, and not at a dangerous rate.

Apparently Wikipedia has been infected by “I enjoy my smugness, my smugness is like a holy halo of know it all-ism.” editors. The link below points to factual updates being consistently deleted of Tysons record of taking non-factual pot-shots at opponents. Sad day for Wikipedia.

That these “scientists” are outright and willfully lying about the nature of climate alarm skepticism was revealed by physics degree holder and science writer David Appell, who in 2012 when exasperated with skeptical blogs, both parroted the slander that mainstream skeptics are Sky Dragon mavericks, but added suggestions from Michael Mann himself that skepticism be itself declared illegal. No technically trained insider like David Appell or Kate Marvel can feign ignorance about the core of climate alarm being water vapor amplification of the old school greenhouse effect, not the greenhouse effect itself. These people are simply evil and have declared war on both cheap energy production and on the reputations of climate alarm skeptics. They really are “climate Nazis,” not even pretending to do real science any more, but now fabricating things wholesale, fake hockey stick blades and fake 97% consensus claims, knowing the media won’t call their bluff because they are also college degree indoctrinated activists.

I’m afraid the big rebellion against progressive activism in the media will come out of other subcultures, not skepticism, since skeptics simply refuse to organize on social media and carry out pointed, on topic, direct exposure of fraud, along with serious boycotting campaigns against advertisers in popular science magazines. I’m just about the only well read skeptic on the two billion dollar media empire VICE.com, even though they don’t even moderate. But when I’m so isolated, I am likely just seen as a lone voice crackpot. The vigorous #gamergate rebellion against journalists puts climate skeptics to shame.

David Appell quote: “They are too many, and too stupid. So what to do about them?

I don’t know. Donald Brown, the philosopher at Penn State who has been writing about the ethics of climate change for well over a decade — I interviewed him in the early 2000s — thinks they are perhaps guilty of crimes against humanity.

Are they? Are Anthony Watts and Marc Morano and Tom Nelson and Steve Goddard smart enough to be guilty of climate crimes?

I think so. You can’t simply claim that CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas.

I think they’re crimes will be obvious in about a decade.

When I profiled Michael Mann for Scientific American, he said he thought it would eventually be illegal to deny climate change. I had doubts about that, but maybe.”

After reading the comments about Kate Marvel, I had to go have a look at her blog. I’m glad I did because now I know a bit more about the hiding heat. You see, Kate has a graph showing that the oceans began hiding heat back in about 1969 or so.

From Kate’s blog:I am so bored[…]

No serious scientist truly believes that the slowdown in surface warming invalidates greenhouse physics, and the argument really only works if you ignore the massive increase in ocean heat content (I grew up in Ohio, so I, too, know how difficult it can be to remember the ocean exists). This is a picture I stole from the super-impressive Katherine Hayhoe, and it shows where all that extra energy is going.
[…]
Look, sometimes the ocean takes up more heat, and sometimes the atmosphere does. This is because the climate system is complex
[…]
But really, my biggest problem with the hiatus is that it’s really so tedious. Talking about it without mentioning ocean heat content and natural climate variability is at best disingenuous and at worst insane, but not in a particularly amusing way. What I don’t understand is that, once you’ve decided to sever all ties with reality, why print the same predictable attacks? If you’re going to make stuff up, at least have some fun with it.

note: At the 1st ellipsis, imagine a graphic showing where all the missing heat is going. The graphic is labeled Increased Heat Absorbed by the Earth (x10²¹), and has a rapidly growing blue squiggle labeled “by the ocean,” and a slowing growing green squiggle labled “by the atmosphere, land & ice”

Perhaps Kate could spend the hiatus looking for the missing heat. Heck, I’d be happy just to know why the oceans started stashing heat back in 1969, and how they did it. Maybe Zeke will be along to blame the Boomers.

I confess to ongoing fascination with the missing/hiding/mythical ocean heat from the man-made global warming conjecture, but equally intriguing is the way even ice has managed to eke out a small increase in its heat-absorbing capacity, according to the super-impressive graphic.

Of course, these are serious scientists with sophisticated models, so what do I know?

If Kate Marvel had an average I.Q. she would have said “all serious scientists truly believe the slowdown in surface warming validates the real-world greenhouse physics of more or less 1 C per doubling of CO2 and invalidates the computer-model greenhouse physics of exaggerated climate sensitivity. But common sense is most uncommon among warmists.

NO “heat” came from the sun, so it ALL had to be created here on earth, by wasting the high quality electro-magnetic radiant energy that does come from the sun.

Not all of the sun’s energy gets wasted as “heat”; much of it is converted into bio-mass, both on land, and in the oceans, via various photo-synthesis processes.

And these days, a microscopic amount of solar energy gets directly converted to electricity, by solar panels.

It is ironic, that here on earth, in order to make use of solar energy (EM radiation) perhaps the highest quality energy, (besides mass), we first totally waste it, by converting it to waste “heat”, and then we try to recover some small part of that, but now restricted by the Carnot efficiency of this and that “heat” engines.

Even nuclear energy, whether fission, or fusion, we first have to waste as heat, before we can get any work out of it.

So no ! I don’t think the heat was there to begin with.

By the way; those of you who believe that some EM radiation IS “heat”, could you please define for us; what is the minimum wavelength of EM radiant energy, that IS “heat” and what is the maximum wavelength of EM radiation that IS heat.

Is 800 nm radiation “heat” ? What about 799 nm, of 797.314 nm; izzat heat ? What specifically happens, when you cross the wavelength threshholds, that are the boundaries of “heat” ?

How about the 2.77 kelvin cosmic background radiation; izzat heat ? Seems to me it would prevent you from getting down to an absolute Temperature of 1E-6 kelvin, or even let you freeze Helium.

How about whistlers, and howlers, and dawn chorus, and other forms of atmospheric EM radiation, that have frequencies, in the few hertz to a few kHz region; are they “heat” ? The infra-low frequency (milli-hertz) frequency EM radiations that allegedly appear before earthquakes; are those radiations “heat” ?

I’m having a hard time trying to recognize when EM radiation, is or is not “heat” (noun).

Now coal is not heat, but I can get heat from it, if I light a match to it, and burn it, but the coal itself still is not heat; nor is the shopping cart, that I use to transport the coal, and its contained chemical energy, out to my car., yet both seem to be transporting “heat”. Well a shopping cart would be convection I suppose, since it transports the actual physical “heat” containing material.

High school science: The conservation of energy dictates that the heat can’t go “missing”. If it ever existed, then it’s still here. If it can’t be found then Occam’s razor would suggest it NEVER EXISTED.

The fabrications were not a one-off thing. They were deliberate and calculated, crafted with one goal in mind: to elevate Tyson, and by extension his audience, at the expense of know-nothing, knuckle-dragging nutjobs who hate science …

There’s only one problem. None of the straw man quotes that Tyson uses to tear them down are real. The quote about the numerically illiterate newspaper headline? Fabricated. The quote about a member of Congress who said he had changed his views 360 degrees? It doesn’t exist. That time a U.S. president said “Our God is the God who named the stars” as a way of dividing Judeo-Christian beliefs from Islamic beliefs? It never happened …

Judging by many of the responses to the three pieces I wrote detailing Neil Tyson’s history of fabricating quotes and embellishing stories (part 1, part 2, and part 3), you’d think I had defamed somebody’s god. It turns out that fanatical cultists do not appreciate being shown evidence that the object of their worship may not, in fact, be infallible.

Which brings us to Wikipedia. Oh, Wikipedia. After I published my piece about Neil Tyson’s fabrication of the George W. Bush quote, several users edited Neil Tyson’s wiki page to include details of the quote fabrication controversy. The fact-loving, evidence-weighing, ever-objective editors of the online encyclopedia did not appreciate the inclusion of the evidence of Tyson’s fabrication. Not at all …

Literally every single mention of Tyson’s history of fabricating quotes has been removed from Tyson’s Wikipedia page …

These lovers of science don’t actually love science, because science requires you to go where the evidence takes you, even if it goes against your original hypothesis …

The modern left formed as a reaction against capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. I think this reaction was driven by a deeply ingrained attitude toward morality. Practically every moral philosophy has warned against the evils of greed and self-interest—and here was an economic system that encourages and rewards those motives. You could look at this and decide that it’s necessary to re-evaluate the moral issues and come to terms with self-interest in some way. Most factions of the modern right have done so, whether they accept self-interest as a necessary evil or to make a virtue of selfishness.

But if you’re not willing to make such an accommodation, you’re going to look around, see all this heedless profit-seeking, and conclude that it must be evil in some way and it must be leading to evil consequences. So you will lend an eager ear to anyone who claims to validate your moral suspicions about capitalism.

In the first go-around, these anti-capitalists tried to capture the science of economics, forming theories about how capitalism is a system of exploitation that will impoverish the common man, while scientific central planning would provide abundance for all.

Let’s just say that this didn’t work out. When it turned out that central planning impoverishes the common man and capitalism provides abundance for all, they had to switch to a fallback position. Which is: to heck with prosperity—too many material goods are the problem. Our greed for more is destroying the planet by causing environmental catastrophes. This shift became official some time in the 1960s with the rise of the New Left.

Some of the catastrophes didn’t pan out (overpopulation, global cooling) and others proved too small to be anything more than a speed bump in the path of capitalism (banning CFCs and DDT). But then along comes global warming—and it’s just too good not to be true. It tells us that capitalism is not just exploiting the workers or causing inequality or deadening our souls with crass materialism. It’s destroying the very planet itself.

The global warming theory tells us that the free market is a doomsday machine bringing about the end of the world. It turns capitalism into a metaphysical evil.

And there is no halfway solution to the problem, no practical fix or technological patch. Carbon dioxide emissions are an unavoidable byproduct of the burning of fossil fuels, and the entire system of industrial capitalism runs on fossil fuels. So the only way to avoid catastrophe is to shut it all down.

You can see how this brings order and balance back to the left’s universe. Their visceral reaction against capitalism is validated on the deepest, most profound level.

You can see how this would be almost like a drug or like an article of religious faith. How can you allow people to question and undermine the very thing that gives meaning to your life? Hence the visceral reaction to global warming skeptics.

Fascinating read. Have recently folded my tent commenting at a local news source. The true believers, when confronted with credible evidence that the Earth no longer has a Godzilla-sized fever, simply cover their ears, eyes and brains(layers of tinfoil helps there), murmuring their talking points in a cult-like drone and pointing to sources like the anti-Science Guy and Tyson. If faced with an advancing ice age, no doubt they will continue to deny the frosty evidence hitting them squarely over the head. Their answer to mundane issues like having their veggie garden killed by the cold and facing energy poverty is to add more solar panels that everyone else helps pay for, insist carbon taxes will teach us all and deny the cold, because NOAA just told them it’s been the hottest year ever and over 97% of ALL scientists agree, so anyone presenting any evidence otherwise must have a Cro-Magnon intellect(and probably should be committed somewhere to undergo re-education). In their euphoric state of swirling cognitive dissonance it’s impossible for them to reconcile how their coveted, yet feared Godzilla-sized CO2 is really just a tiny, harmless and actually helpful gecko. (And the poor gecko must go-at any price.)

I found the FB Link where Neil Degrasse makes a fool out of himself: I am not sure if everyone can see this response, but you can see him “stick to his guns here” and then see my response schooling him on why he does not understand what he’s talking about.

My father has the same name as me, and asked what I thought… I responded candidly.

Basically, the graph she gives doesn’t show the oceans “doing more work” now; it shows that they did less work than normal in the 1990s–in other words, the period when everyone started hyperventilating about CO2-induced warming was the period when the added heat in the atmosphere was coming from the *oceans*.